((Sadly, I have lost touch with Malus, with what he represents. It happens to us all, at one point or another. Hopefully, in this battle, I can recapture the true essence of Malus.))
He had changed over the years. Some of the changes were obvious for all to see, like the way his once jet-black hair had been bleached the purest white by the imnense stress that had existed with him for all his life. His face had become even more pale and drawn, his expression grim. He almost looked like a drug-abuser, wasting away as life slowly lost it's meaning to him. The lines on his face were deeper, and his cold, synthetic eyes had a haunted look about them that failed miserably to hide a dark and depressing past. A far cry from the young, idealistic marine whom had first enlisted in the Colonial Marines only three years ago, with dreams of glory and saving the human race. Gone was the lopsided grin, the relaxed attitude and the cigar that was nochalantly smoked. Gone was the slight swagger in his step, the aggressive confidence of a Marine who knew he was powerful enough to hold his own against anything out there. This was a man without anything left to live for. Without a cause to subsribe to. Someone whom had discovered his whole life had been a lie, and was drowning in the inky black depths of his own corrupted soul. The other changes were more subtle, more well concealed. He had lost his sense of humour. His voice had become flat and cold, without tone or accent or inflection. His walk had changed. Whilst once he had walked with his back upright, a slight swagger in his step and his comrades by his side, he now walked alone, with a rolling, predatory gait that showed how the years of war had eroded at his humanity until there was little left, save for the very thing that had broken him. War. War and blood and death.
His uniform had also changed, from it's signature Tiger-stripes pattern to a more muted tone. His jet-black gloves were stained with dried blood and gore, and as he flexed his fingers into a fist the dried blood cracked. The armour plate on the backs of the hands of them each bore a image of a skull wearing a army helmet, with the words 'Mort' on them. His armour, black when he had aquired it was not stained a dark, dirty brown by the blood and gore that had painted it's surface, and it was clear that no further adornment to it was needed. He didn't clean it anymore. He didn't care if he no longer looked like the crisp and clean hero of humanity. He wasn't a hero anymore. Maybe he never had been. The blood staining it was both red and green, making it clear that he had not just killed humans, but those shadowy, mysterious hunters that stalked the nightmares of the most grizzled veterans. He did not dream about them. His nightmares made such creatures pale in comparison, because the monster that haunted his own nightmares was him. His cold, synthetic eyes were ice-blue and the pixelated irises of them revolved slightly around the pupil as he cast his gaze around himself. Always looking, but never finding what he was looking for. Something to kill. Something to maim and butcher and slaughter, to destroy in an orgy of bloodlust that would release the pressure that was building in the back of his skull, pouring from his unhinged mind like blood leaking from a bullet wound.
The migranes were getting worse every day. The tactical information and ideas that whizzed around his skull spoke with voices that were not his own, and along with prudent tactical advice and innovative ideas it whispered thoughts of desruction and blood and death into his ears. He didn't listen to it. They had nothing that he wanted to hear. He didn't take any painkillers for the migranes, either. The pain was good for him. It drowned out the voice and reminded him that he was still alive. Reminded him that he had not yet met the same fate that he had inflicted on so many. Did he feel any guilt? Did he feel any remorse, or sorrow about the lives he had taken? No. He felt nothing. And it was that emptiness that scared him more than anything else. That had scared him, at first. Now, he just accepted it. The only deaths he regretted were those of his allies. Of the soldiers that had fought and screamed and died around his feet while he slaughtered his enemies in thier name. Had they breathed thier last breath for the good of mankind, dying as a martyr to the cause of survival that was so important to them? Had their sacrifice been worth it? Or were they just blown apart by a moment's distraction, thier lives cut off for no reason other than the fact that they weren't good enough to retain them. He knew what answer the voice would give. He concentrated hard on a particularly tough tactical problem: IE, how to rebuild humanity. That shut the voice up. Good.
As he stalked down the dark corridor, his mind too distracted by various plans and ideas to really give a shit about where he was, he checked and rechecked the casualty lists that he held in his right hand, comparing them to the unit roster he held in his left. Total soldiers, total WIA, total MIA, total KIA. Total remaining soldiers. It was war. It was a ravenous beast and it fed on lives. He tried to make sure that it was fed on the lives of the enemy and not his allies, but the two distinctions were becoming blurred. How could he really judge the creatures that fought for the exact same cause that he did? Oh, sure. He could pretend to himself that he still believed in the cause of defending humanity, in the quest to be forever immortalised in the annals of history as a great hero. Or, he could admit that he killed because he was good. Because he was good at it. Because after a lifetime of war it was all that he knew. Cause and effect, attack and defence, casualties and losses. He'd lost mercifully few in the defence of Earth, but each life weighed on him heavily, dragging him down further into the abyss that yawned open, waiting to suck the last vestiges of him dry. But he didn't give a shit about the puny pink creatures that screamed and ran and begged and died, too weak to consider fighting back. Surely a being that was incapable of fighting for thier life had no purpose, and therefore that life was forfeit.
The weak perish. The strong survive. That was what the voice told him. He held his scarred head in his gloved hands and screamed for it to shut up, to leave him be so that he could think straight for one damn second without it putting it's bloody foot in. He didn't realize for a moment that he was screaming aloud. He didn't care. He shouted down the voice until it was inaudible over the pain. Then he kept walking. Whilst his own casualties had been light, the casualties of his so-called allies in Alpha Draconis had been heavy indeed. They still clung to thier tattered and scarred banners and standards of heroism and compassion, completely oblivious to the fact that they were deluded and were dying in droves for nothing. He giggled for a moment, and said aloud to no-one in particular. "And they wonder why so many of them die?", and giggled a little more. He'd used them as bullet-shields for his own soldiers. Not literally, of course, but tactically. Thier desire for senseless heroism left them screaming as they charged the enemy. It had been all that Malus could do to not join them. Not with the voice screaming at him. But no. He'd let them have thier fun and coldly used them as bait to draw out the enemy. Then, he'd used his own men as bait to draw them into positions where he could crush them. His own soldiers survived being the bait, of course. The marines were trained to die for the cause. His soldiers were trained to live so they could get paid. And if there was a cause, then make some other bastard die for it.
He giggled as he walked down the corridor, his combat boots clunking against the stone floor. He had left the marines because thier leaders were sacrificing the marines senselessly. Now, he himself was sacrificing the marines, too. To him, it was incredibly funny, one of the best jokes in the world. Not that the world was anything much now. War had finally come to Earth, and although he had won it, Earth had lost. He'd killed until there was nothing left worth killing. But there was one last life he was determined to take before he died. One person who had to be held accountable for making turning him from a young and idealistic marine into a monster. One person whom had to meet his creation, and be destroyed by it, in the tradition that had been started by the german Dr. Frankenstein. Ah, how things had gone full circle. He remembered where he was now. In germany. Nuremberg, in fact. Or what had once been Nuremberg. Now it was something else. Hell, maybe. Malus had done far worse things to it than what the Nazi Party had attempted to accomplish. He flipped over the two peices of paper to look at thier backs. At first, the paper appeared black with small white dots here and there. After a minute's full concentration, one realized it was pen. A single phrase which had been written again and again and again until the words were buried underneath each other and no longer held any real meaning. Kidd must die. Kidd must die. Kidd must die. That phrase was written exactly five hundred and one times on each page.
And now he was about to obey the orders that were written on those papers. His M41S Pulse Rifle clutched in his gloved and gore-covered hands, he advanced through the corridor to the room in the shattered building where Kidd had set up a command room. After another minute, he had reached the door. The two insects guarding it had not expected the leader of thier allies to draw his razor-sharp Xenomorph Bone machete and with a single sweep open up thie arteries on thier necks and cut off thier voices and thier life. One had the time to ask "Malus?" Before he slit his throat. He must've known that marine once. Oh well. He stood there as they collapsed without a single sound, save for a gurgle, and slowly licked the blood from the blade's edge, delicately cleaning the machete. When he was done, the weapon slid into it's sheath. He tasted his own blood. Oops, he'd nicked his own tongue. No matter. As the life-blood of the two guards left thier bodies and formed a little pool on the stone floor, he saw his own reflection. In his mind, he saw a skull. The blood stained his already gore-encrusted combat boots as he stood there, before calmly stepping over the two corpses and raising one blood-slicked boot. The still warm blood dripped from the combat boot as he drew it back and slammed it into the wooden door with enough force to knock it clean off it's hinges. Inside the office was a large desk, cluttered with papers and communications gear. Two humans were speaking. One of them, a marine, he did not recognize. That one died quickly, a single bullet shot fourth by the explosive propellant that each was packed with, roaring from the muzzle of his M41S 'Stealth' Variant Pulse Rifle and crossing the distance between murderer and murdered in an instant.
The marine's head exploded with a dull thud as the 10mm caseless explosive round detonated inside it's brainpan and blew it's brains all over those carelessly stacked papers and meticulously maintained commincations gear. The second one was Kidd. It was his fault. All of it. He decided then and there that Kidd would have to understand what he had wrought before he died. But he wasn't going to tell him. No. Kidd had to work it out for himself. He only had to shift the aim of his M41S the slightest of amounts before the weapon was aimed squarely at Kidd. Silhoutted by the doorframe, the door now resting under the corpse of the dead marine, whom had slid out of the chair and onto the floor, he took aim. Kidd, sitting in the seat must have been in deep discussion with the marine. His eyes were wide with surprise and shock. Obviously, of all the possible things that could happen he had not predicted this. Of course he had not. Kidd was no tacitcal genius. Not like the man whom was about to kill him. Nor was the man a master of war in the same way as this monster, this beast of slaughter. He was just a man, and what chance did a man have against such a creature? He didn't have time to react before the hungry fingers holding the Stealth Variant rifle squeezed the trigger, and the weapon ejaculated another caseless bullet. This one did not detonate Kidd's head, as it had with the man whom he had been speaking to. It shot clean through the wooden table, detonating and making a small hole in the table. Kidd was unharmed. Unfortunately for him, however, his assailant had fired a three-round burst, and the very moment that the first round had cleared the path another two shot through the hole of the table and impacted squarely with the real target.
Kidd's right hand. The second bullet in the burst hit and exploded, ripping Kidd's thumb and forefinger into shreds and reducing them to splinters of bone and tiny shrapnel and chunks of gore, which were then thrown around the immediate vicinity. One such chunk of bone from the thumb shot off at an angle and impaled itself into the meat of Kidd's right shin. Another, from his forefinger, hit his boot just above where the steel plate would be, and penetrated all the way to the bone, before glancing off and impaling the woodwork of the table. The third and final round of the burst hit Kidd's hand a tiny bit higher, brought upwards by the recoil to impact with his wrist. The wrist is not a single bone, nor is it a ball and socket joint. It is in fact a series of plate bones that slide along each other to give the wrist limited articulation. For a 10mm light armour peircing round with an explosive tip, this joint proved to be very weak indeed. The round detonated a microsecond after impact, just enough to dig under the flesh and skin and slide between two of the bones in the wrist to detonate with a small roar and completely deconstruct Kidd's wrist. The bones were no more, except for one that ended up lodged deep into his right thigh. A bit closer to Kidd's leg than the last round, the explosion caused a small expanding cloud of shrapnel which caused deep flesh wounds in Kidd's leg and made any movement in that leg extremely difficult. Especially since one peice of bone sliced through the ligaments in the back of Kidd's kneecap. If Kidd put any pressure on that leg, it would collapse.
It was deemed a efficient use of ammunition by the man whom had fired the rounds. On the flipside, the holster that had held Kidd's sidearm had been strapped to his hip. On the right side. Whilst the weapon itself was completely undamaged by the shrapnel of the miniature explosion, save for a few scratches on the paintwork, the holster that was holding it was another story. The weapon slid from it's sheath and onto the floor. By now, the leader of Alpha Draconis must have caught on to the situation, because he had started to move. The attacker, anticipating retaliation of some form or another ducked back out of the room and felt his hand brush against something cold and metal. One of the hand grenades belonging to the guards, he realized. He ripped the entire bandolier loose from the corpse and pulled the pin on one of the grenades, and tossed it into the office. He then retreated a few more steps and into another doorway, firing a single 40mm Pulse Rifle grenade at the doorway to the office, just to make sure that if Kidd made a break for the hallway he would not survive such a venture. The room was clear. Just a storage closet. Not that any of that mattered. What it was, was cover. He heard the dull crump of the first grenade -a fragmentation grenade, he was pleased to note from the sound of it- detonate, followed by the other seven grenades in the bandolier. He would have liked to think that Kidd would be dead, but he knew better. Kidd would have flipped the table over and used that for cover. But the grenades had not been intended to harm Kidd. They had been intended to destroy all his radioes and communications gear. As well as his precious plans and paperwork.
Also, it would get the veteran marine ducking and prevent him from forming an immediate counterattack. He could either knock over the table and hide there, with one hand completely useless -the muscles and ligaments that controlled it were gone, and he would not have been surprised if the hand had been seperated from the arm completely. Even if it hadn't, firing a weapon was impossible without one's thumb and forefinger. Meaning he'd have to fire with his non-preferred hand, and would not be able to hold it properly with his other one. His accuracy would be shot to hell. And he wouldn't be able to run anywhere. Or, alternatively, he could have vaulted the table -an almost impossible task given his leg- and made a break for the hallway to regain the initiative. The grenade launcher exploded as it reached the doorway and reduced it to rubble just before the main grenades went off. If Kidd had made a run for it, he would have just lost his other leg. The third option would have been he'd been too slow and died, but he knew Kidd better than that. The tactical implications of his attack and the possible responses that his enemy could make swirled around in his skull, the burden of a tactical genius that weighed so heavily on him and had doubtless contributed to the snap of his mind now serving him well indeed.
Unfortunately for Kidd, the other two marines had also been equipped with grenades. The man with whom he had been speaking had also had a bandolier of eight Pulse Rifle grenades. When the eight that he had thrown had exploded, they'd set off the others. As well as the man's ammunition. The room was completely, totally and utterly destroyed. Against the combined explosive force of a full sixteen grenades the table was reduced to matchwood and every single radio and peice of paper was shredded. And that was only the start of it. The grenade that he had fired into the doorway set off the grenades of the second guard whom had been at the doorway. Another series of explosions reduced the doorway and that part of the hallway to a miniature holocaust. He, of course, was protected by the fact that he was in another room entirely. Kidd had not been so lucky. There had been only one enterance to the office, and the guards posted outside had done no good. The windows had been armoured too, to prevent any snipers from shooting through them. That had been his preferred method of assasination, but in the end perhaps killing Kidd face to face was better.
"You brought this upon yourself, you know. Oh, you took the glory and the medals, but who was it that brought in the recruits? Who was it who organized the soldiers while you were busy admiring your reflection. Who was it who took care of the soldier's training and issued them with thier equipment? WHO WAS IT THAT KEPT ALPHA DRACONIS GOING!? TELL ME WHO! Tell me who REALLY kept Alpha Draconis going after TDN resigned? BECAUSE IT SURE AS FUCK WASN'T YOU!" He shouted out towards the office, leaning out into the hallway to fire a twenty round burst of fire. He was down to Seventy Six bullets now. The M41S 'Stealth' Variant Pulse Rifle lacked the LED ammo counter. He counted them as he fired them. He poured all of his bitterness, all of his feelings of being betrayed and unappreciated into those words and into those bullets. And he was right. Kidd hadn't been there to keep his unit going, he'd just told the young and eager recruit to take care of it. When the eager recruit wasn't so eager anymore, Kidd had tried to stop him from leaving. He'd ordered. He'd requested. It wasn't enough. The first time that Malus Jay Darkblade left Alpha Draconis, he had taken half of the Marines with him. Another fifth had left to find thier own way. Barely a third of the original marines had remained with Kidd. Malus's attempt at forming a unit of his own had succeeded only thanks to the loyalty of his soldiers, before eventually disbanding. Alpha Draconis didn't last as long as Malus's unit. Eventually, Malus and Kidd re-formed the unit, and the idealistic soldier was once again filled with hope.
"You call yourself a leader of men? Really? When I was gone there wasn't much left to lead, was there? Maybe if you had actually been with the troops, if you had listened to them and done some of the fucking work yourself instead of doing nothing, they'd have been loyal to you, instead. You didn't even thank me when I picked up the slack. I covered for your mistakes, I took care of the details you forgot. Where would Alpha Draconis have been if I hadn't done all the recruiting for you? If I hadn't constructed Fort Alpha? If I hadn't trained the troops and given them reason to stay?" Now his voice lowered from the pitch it had built up, from choked rage to venemous bitterness. "Why, it would have been right where it is now. No-one wants to join up anymore, and the few that actually do don't stay long, do they? You're neglecting the few troopers you have. It was very nice of you to just leave Murray for us to babysit while you went gallivanting off to 'slay the dragon' and be a hero. You are no leader. You're just a fool with a crown." Malus Jay Darkblade, Commanding Officer of Weyland-Yutani Corporations' Military element and the infamous Traitor of Alpha Draconis hissed bitterly. His gaze swept all around him, and even as he poured out his anger he didn't let his guard drop. His rifle was held at the ready, and he was listening and looking and even smelling for any trouble. Kidd only had one direction to come at Malus from. If he was still alive.
((Sitrep at end of 1st post. Right hand is gone. Right leg is seriously injured and I frankly have no idea in hell how you're going to survive my little spring cleaning of your office. Good luck mate, and happy posting.))